I have been interrupted in the task of writing this column by IM. For those of you who are not as techno-linguistically advanced as I am, IM means instant messaging which, I assume, means email. In the course of writing these few sentences I have interrupted myself to read seven emails. I’ve always had a short attention span, which is probably what led me to be reading an article on the internet about a study into whether or not instant messaging (IM) contributes to task interruption (TI). Personally I would have thought you only needed to glance around the office to figure that out, but somebody evidently decided they needed to spend trillions of dollars to complete a study to confirm it.
They may well have discovered that there are countless people like me who amuse themselves trawling the internet looking for totally meaningless studies.
For example, someone, somewhere with more money than sense developed a burning desire to know whether chauvinistic men earn more than non-chauvinistic men and commissioned a study in the United States to find out. And yes, they do. Around $12,000 per annum, in fact. But even if you could get your hands on it, it doesn’t seem adequate compensation for having a husband who thinks it’s always your job to do the dishes.
Similarly, you’ll be excited by the British health and nutrition study that has shown Coronation Street is the unhealthiest soap on television because the characters eat fatty food or drink alcohol for at least 10 minutes during each 30-minute episode. It’s hard to imagine how much it might have cost to find that out but I’m sure the information will be incredibly valuable to someone.
As will the knowledge that it’s a misconception that dresses or tops with horizontal stripes appear to broaden a person's figure. Peter Thompson, a psychologist at York University, may be the first (and, one hopes, the last) scientist to investigate this well known fashion illusion. He discovered that a dress with vertical stripes made a woman appear about 6 per cent wider than an equivalent-sized dress with horizontal stripes. Thompson said he didn’t know when the idea that horizontal stripes made women look fat came to prominence, and he also cannot explain why vertical stripes should make someone look less slim and shorter than someone wearing horizontal stripes. I wonder if he can explain why he undertook the study in the first place.
Those of us who think we look fat whichever way our stripes go may want to read a recent study into the Amish lifestyle, which seems to show – surprise, surprise – that three to four hours of moderate activity a day will prevent those with a fat gene from becoming overweight. Since my susceptibility to Task Interruption prevents me doing anything for three to four hours at a time, particularly exercise, I will have to rely on getting my stripes the right way around to ensure my bum doesn’t look big in this.